Sales

The saying ‘good things come to those who wait’ is partly true for those selling a property. While many aspects of a successful sale are in the hands of third parties, the waiting part is something sellers have some control over.

According to the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals, 53% of UK adults own a pet, therefore a large proportion of sellers will have a cat, dog or other domestic animal. While we are a nation of animal lovers, not everyone wants a furry encounter when they’re searching for a new home.

When filling in the Property Information Form (TA6), sellers need to be open and honest about a number of aspects. One of those is neighbourly disputes and things that may prove to be contentious in the future. This can be a grey area, so we’ve provided the answers to the most commonly asked neighbourly dispute questions.

While decluttering and lick of paint may add some value to your home before you sell (they’ll definitely add appeal), the best returns are on more practical improvements – ones that need careful planning, time and money.

What kind of outdoor person are you? Lush lawns and well-tended flower beds? Do you prefer to focus on fun, with a trampoline and hot tub? Or are you all about the atmosphere, with festoon lights and firepits?

Based on three different data sets, the average age for a first-time buyer in the UK is 34 – a figure that has been rising over the last decade, whichever analysis you look at.

Bedrooms that never get used? Too much time spent cleaning and fixing? Yearning to be mortgage free? It may be time to weigh up the pros and cons of downsizing to a smaller property.

You may have joined Instagram to document your life. Some of you may have opened an account on behalf of your pet but have you thought about an Instagram account purely for your property?

There’s only a very small minority of buyers who will purchase a property without visiting in person. For the masses, a viewing is the ‘make or break’ stage in the search process. If they don’t like what they see, they’ll be discouraged from making an offer and will swiftly move on to the next possibility.

When Rightmove decided to compile a list of the top 10 most in-demand features among buyers, it looked at more than 600,000 property listings to establish which aspects led to the highest number of enquiries. Forget a garden or being near a station (they languished at the bottom of the list), the most in-demand feature among purchasers is a renovation project – a home classed as a fixer-upper in need of work.

While it’s common to think purchasers will stretch their budget for a property with a newly-installed bathroom, an all-singing, all-dancing garden room or perhaps off-street parking, lots of storage is actually one of a home’s most valuable aspects.